Greening the networked economy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 172

Norway and Sweden), and calls for harmonisation (for instance, at the
EU level) are regularly heard.
Third, environmental auditing systems have been strongly pushed
by and become part of both business-to-business relations and civil
society requests for transparency and information. As such these sys-
tems, and the internal informational processes and requirements com-
ing along with that, have moved from a management tool for internal
affairs to a requisite tool 'forced' on companies by their social and
economic environment. Consequently, the informational flows related
to and following environmental auditing are increasingly disclosed
beyond the company gate. And although final decisions on environ-
mental data and information transparency remain in most countries
in the end part of company policies and interests, the external pres-
sures make such decisions no longer a matter of 'internal affairs'. Sev-
eral empirical studies (e.g. Patten, 1992 ; Deegan and Rankin, 1996 ;
O'Donovan, 1999 ; 2002 ; Campbell, 2003 ) have compared company
environmental disclosure policies within and across industrial sectors
in OECD countries, using legitimacy theory. The general findings seem
to show that companies that are more environmentally sensitive dis-
close over a period of time more environmental information than
those in less environmentally sensitive areas, following the larger felt
need to legitimise their company behaviour and safeguard their rep-
utational capital. In addition, companies within sectors follow more
or less similar disclosure policies, often also resulting from sectoral
agreements.
Fourth and finally, these corporate environmental auditing, report-
ing and disclosure practices have moved from the OECD coun-
tries - mostly via transnational companies and the global networked
economy - to domestic companies in industrialising societies. Jaffar
et al. ( 2002 ) report, for instance, on the quality and quantity of envi-
ronmental auditing, reporting and disclosure by Malaysian companies.
Although still voluntary - and found in only some 20 percent of the
Malaysian companies, with often ambivalent qualities and far from
complete in terms of environmental indicators - these company envi-
ronmental reporting and disclosures are clearly increasing in Malaysia
(cf. Figure 7.1 ). Chapter 10 i llustrates that the same is true for China
but less so for Vietnam.
These advancements in company environmental information, and
their reflection and codification in certification systems, also have